Minimig Case

[TheDaddy]

@everyone

What a week we've had! :-)

OS4.1 and the enclosure for the Minimig!

A few dancing bananas:

:banana:  :banana:  :banana:

Minimig Enclosure Update:

Screen printing is TOO EXPENSIVE to have at the moment so the case/enclosure will be available in two formats:

Plain glossy white - so you can do whatever you want with it, put your own design/graphics or sticker on it or leave it in pure glossy white. Elegant, modern and sleek! 8-)

or

With the Minimig logo I have designed applied like in the photos, £8 (GBP) or 10Euros extra- there are several colours to choose from: black, yellow, purple, orange, silver, gold, red, maroon, blue, green, grey and a few others. Just tell me your colour choice at the time of pre-ordering. I have applied the logo in silver to the prototype and it looks particularly elegant and professional. ;-)

Please keep registering your interest as once we reach a minimum of 50 we are going into production! :-D

Thank you.

 :-)  

[TheDaddy]

I forgot to add the following colours:

Pink, brown and burgundy. Basically you can have the logo on the enclosure in any colour you like as long as it is one of the listed ones!

 :-D

[AJCopland]

But what does it look like?

[ZeBeeDee]

AJCopland wrote:
But what does it look like?

Well ...

It's kinda square'ish
It's got holes in it
Comes in various colours

Hell, I could be describing any number of things other than a minimig case

[TheDaddy]

@AJCopland

>>But what does it look like?

I will release it next week and start taking pre-orders, this means that more detailed photos will be posted, as usual, on my site.

www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Many thanks :-)

[arnljot]

@AJCopland:

If you click here you'll get a pretty good idea... It's a link on the first post in this thread

edit:
@TheDaddy:
You beat me to it.

[TheDaddy]

>>It's kinda square'ish
>>It's got holes in it
>>Comes in various colours

Please note that the colour of the enclosure is glossy white, the different choice of colours is for the Minimig name/logo on it.

When ordering please state if you prefer the plain enclosure or with the Minimig logo/name transfer on it, this can be any of the colours mentined above.

Thank you :-)

[Darrin]

AJCopland wrote:
But what does it look like?

It doesn't matter.  I've got a feeling that the final cost is going to make most people run for the hills in terror.

[weirdami]

Why is there no picture of the whole thing at once? All I see are closeups.

[TheDaddy]

>>It doesn't matter. I've got a feeling that the final cost is going to make most people run for the hills in terror.

You are right Darrin.

It's definately going to cost more than any other enclosure seen for the minimig, that is for sure.

Consider that it's custom made (it won't fit anything else)and manufactured in a limited run. We are talking small production scale. 50 is the minimum I have to order otherwise I (and others) can kiss good bye to it.

In the pc and mac industry the quantities are in the thousands and thousands, can't compare.

But again this has taken months to design, you get a complete, modern looking, smart enclosure, which has been professionally machined after been put through several CAD drawings, it's gone through three prototypes stages to reduce costs (which are then passed to the customers) and finally it will be manufactured  by a professional company for a mad individual like me.:crazy:

It's made of good quality 4mm thick plastic, not 1mm thin moulded plastic that breaks when you look at it. One of the engineers believes that it's not far off any other product you can buy on the high street. Also a special no-screw assembly system had to be implemented because of the minimig board peculiarity (ever so difficult to solve).

It's made in Europe (U.K.) and I believe that it will be good value for money, I am much happier playing my games on my minimig now that it is in a nice enclosure, I can carry it around to my mates house without worrying that the board would get damaged.

So yes it will be expensive but how much does a mini or nano itx case cost? £50-120 (British Pounds), to that add your time, effort and money for cutting out eleven holes and adding extensions.

You can always use two plexiglass sheets with stand offs, about £24 (GBP), but at the end of the day these one man projects cost and only I know how much.:-o

Of all the people who have registered some have told me quite frankly that they are prepared to pay up to 200 Euros others no more than 80 Euros.

Next week, I am seeing the sales manager at the factory who is going to help me set up a price. But rest assured that the price and final photos will be announced this coming week.

From my point of view I have invested an enormous amount of time, effort, passion, energy (thinking about it night and day) and cash into this, for the following reasons:

Give the brilliant Minimig board a decent home.
Give something to the Amiga/Commodore community which I have been part of for the last 26-27 years.
Start something great, and hopefully develop an A1200 replacement enclosure and one for the Natami.

Again I don't believe people run for the hills in terror when it comes to Amiga stuff, as ebay teaches us, (see the cost of various parts or operating systems we keep purchasing, five years ago I paid £140 for the Power Tower , nowdays the Elbox D-Box is £160) , so hopefully they will also support a small developer like me.

Many thanks

    :-)

[TheDaddy]

Hi weirdami,

This coming week, price and final photos.

The enclosure can be purchased with or without the Minimig name on it, so people are free to put whatever they like.

The name/logo on the enclosure that you can see on my site is a bit extra on the cost of the plain case and you can order it in different colours.

Many thanks.

 :-)

[codenetfx]

Case will very likely cost a few hundred dollars ($400-500) if it is produced in small quantities. It may cost more if it is made of really, really special plastic

TheDaddy deserves all the respect for pulling though this project.

Owning an Amiga is very similar to owning a classic muscle car Your wallet and your foot is ready to go whenever opportunity knocks

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:

You are right Darrin.

It's definately going to cost more than any other enclosure seen for the minimig, that is for sure.

I'm not knocking you for doing this, it's just that I'm worried you're going to lose some serious money.

Let's assume you manage a minimum order of 50 units.  Let us also assume you want to make at least $1000 for your trouble and recover some costs.  That means you're going to have to charge $20 ontop of unit costs (or $25 if you're planning on paying taxes on it).

As you sold a car to finance this, I think you're probably looking for $5000 or more, so that's $100-$125 on each case.

OK, so you have people saying they'll pay $200 a case, but there's a big difference between people who say they'll pay and people who will pay.

[Amiduffer]

C'mon Darrin, in the history of people who have invented products, its normal to put everything into something and not get an immediate return.

Just ask Elias Howe, who had to go seriously in debt and wait decades before people accepted the sewing machine.

[TheDaddy]

Hi Darrin,

I should have put a smiley at the beginning, my tone wasn't sarcastic, I really do agree with you. :-)

Developing a product is a massive feat, not only from an economic point of view but also emotional. You keep thinking what if it goes wrong, you lose all that time and money that would have been useful somewhere else like buying myself another car and not having to cycle to work in the rain! :-)

But this is the Amiga, 99% of us use, buy, develop for and stick with Amiga following their heart, it might sound a bit sugary but there is no logic in our community.

I agree on everything you say completely and I am probably going to lose out but what can I do at this point in time with the production run ready to start?

Hopefully I manage to recover the costs and make some extra for my next projects or maybe ACube will make another batch of Minimigs...who knows... :-)

[arnljot]

@Darrin

$ is toy money now-a-days, he said €...

Besides. Look at good looking ITX cases, the Nexus Psile is about £180 (that is about €224). Other cheaper ITX cases with hints of design: Silver Silverstone SST-LC12-S Mini-ITX is about €80, Silver Casetronic C137 Travla Mini CheckerCube ITX at €97.

Yes, you can get ITX cases at around €30 to 50. But they look like c*ap.

With the MiniMig case you get:
1) Unique Amiga design case, for a unique form factor card
2) Exclusive limited edition production run (euforism for small scale one person initiative)

I'm sure I could count more points, but it doesn't matter. With his design skills and entrepeneurship I'm sure Loranio could have made a killing on producing unique designs for ITX flex (SAM) and ITX(efika). There really isn't much to choose from. My dream is a Psile-like case just a little taller than a mac mini. And I'd buy two of them. One for a x86 AROS/Ubuntu box, and one for an efika MOS/*nix setup.

But think of the scale Silverstone and Psile can produce in. And still be so expensive as you consider them. And then what someone like Loranio can achieve in that market...

Thank god he's focusing on MiniMig! hehe

(but TheDaddy, you need to fix up Efika and SAM before Natami, Natami can still wait some months!